The present invention relates to a vehicle control system in which a plurality of electronic control units are connected via a network.
Recently, vehicle control systems which reflect accelerator pedal, steering wheel, braking pedal, and other operations performed by a driver in driving force, steering force, and braking force generating mechanisms by means of electronic control rather than mechanical coupling have been developed actively to improve driving comfort and safety. In such a system, a plurality of electronic control units (ECU) distributed over the vehicle perform coordinated operation by exchanging data via a network. When an ECU within the network develops a fault, it is essential for fail-safe purposes that the remaining normal ECUs identify the faulty ECU accurately and perform appropriate backup control depending on the faulty spot. Incidentally, ECUs connected to a network may be referred to as nodes hereinafter.
To solve the above problem, JP-A-2000-47894 describes a technique in which each node of a system monitors status of the other nodes in a network.